July 15, 2009

Earlier this week in the NY Times, Steven Levitt (co-author of Freakonomics) announced that he - and his sister - were seeking contributions for the creation of a Freakonomics Trivia game. An example of the type of questions they are seeking is below:

Michael Jackson died suddenly on June 25, 2009, at the age of 50. How many other people died on that same day, internationally?

15,000

80,000

150,000

300,000

According to Levitt, it's hard to find people who can write the kinds of questions they want to ask in the game. So, if interested in contributing, email Levitt's sister here. She’ll give you the details.

30 percent drop in the Dow is statistically associated with a 6 percent decline in the value of household net worth and a 4 percent decline in charitable giving.

Outside the world of statistics on charitable giving is the personal care that individuals, families and friends bestow upon each other. It is often in the unkindest of times that people most bravely extend care to those in the hidden and silent corners of need.

July 01, 2009

May 02, 2009

Here's more evidence that we truly do think and act with our hearts. Unfortunately, some decisions we make actually outlive the the incidental emotion that provoked the action or decision. While the ramifications for this research is significant in understanding how behaviors and future decision-making can be manipulated, it is also helpful in understanding and preventing our own knee-jerk emotional reactions based on isolated events.

Researchers Eduardo Andrade (UC Berkeley) and Dan Ariely (Duke) have found that people often do not realize they are being influenced by these incidental emotional states. As a result, they suggest that decisions based on a fleeting incidental emotion can become the basis for future decisions and hence outlive the original cause for the behavior (i.e., the emotion itself). What these scholars are suggesting is that people tend to retrieve past affect-based judgments and directly use them when making future decisions. Moreover, it is believed that this retrieval can be of either positive or negative experiences.

Here's an example: a student visiting a college campus experiences inclement weather on the visit. This weather during the campus visit influenced the student's enrollment decision a few months after the experience. Imagine then the potential subsequent enduring (and perhaps life-altering) impact the weather (emotion) on that day has had on the student's life.

Now imagine all of the ways in which mood and emotion can affect your life, co-workers and your organization, and the donors who support it.

(With apologies to the researchers, this example is just one miniscule facet of their comprehensive study on the enduring impact of transient emotions).

April 18, 2009

Forget elevator speeches. What if you were asked to make a meaningful presentation in 5 minutes using 20 slides that automatically rotate every 15 seconds?

For the past 2-3 years, people have been gathering at Ignite nights to do some fast talking - with meaning.

Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis. Since then 100s of 5 minute talks have been given across the world. There are thriving Ignite communities in Seattle, Portland, Paris, and NYC. Check out the example below.